


Welcome to the Night

by sarramaks



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4629693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarramaks/pseuds/sarramaks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season Three for those who cannot wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

New Mexico

Sometimes it’s what you don’t see. It’s the items that are hidden from view that are the most telling; one one’s hidden in cupboards or concealed under throws, behind pictures. Or even in rooms hidden from your casual visitor. It’s those things that are most telling about the character of a person, the things they wish you not to know.

The good man and his wife standing in front of the house my father had built when I was a boy have no idea of the dark things that have happened in that place, and nor should they need to. For them, Prosperity is a new start. What has occurred within those four walls previously need never touch their lives although they may wonder what the faint scent that clings to the air inside might be.

Sage. White sage. Used to cleanse in so many religions; rids a person or a place of its sins. I am more familiar with the stuff than I wish to be.

After seven months I return to England. This time my journey there will not be one of flight as it was last time. Instead it will be one of hope, that the people I have left will still be there, well and alive. I am unsure of my welcome, for there are still sins for which I need to atone.

“Ethan.”

I turn around to the copse behind me and see my old friend through the trees. Her face is a creased as a linen shirt after being slept in, brown weather-worn skin framing the white of her eyes.

“Ela,” I say, backing into the trees so the new proprietor of my childhood home will not be disturbed. “I thought you had gone south for a few days?”

“I had,” she says, looking up to the skies. “But the weather changed its mind and decided to keep the storms until after you have left, which makes it a good time to pick the roots and leaves.”

I laugh. The old woman has never fooled me, even as a boy, but then she has never tried. “You weren’t going to let me go quietly, were you?”

Ela smiles. “No, Ba’cho. But then you never went anywhere quietly.” She is watching the birds in the trees rather than me. As much as she can’t fool me, I cannot read her so I don’t know whether her thoughts are about those birds or the events of the past few months. She is a wise woman, the tribe’s eldest member as no one can recall when she was born, if she ever was. “You will remember this time what I have taught you?”

I take a seat on a fallen tree, the bark smooth having been used for that purpose by many others already. “I can’t afford to forget.”

“The herbs? Your Miss Ives will help you?”

“If she…” I stop and look away. Grab a blade of long grass to chew. I don’t think of Vanessa often. I speak of her only to Ela, and that is out of necessity. But she resides in my dreams and in the chill that creeps rarely into the wind that I am sure is sent by her moors.

A bird of prey circles. Somewhere something has died. “She knows you are alive and yes, she is angry, but mainly at herself.”

“She has no reason to be cross with herself.”

“Neither have you. And if we need to have that conversation again you will need to delay your leaving.” Ela sits down, the carved stick forever by her side. “The herbs and the amulet will help if you believe they will. You have done your atoning and can do no more of it. You have a purpose and the gift – for that is how you must look at it – will help you serve that purpose.”

“This past week,” I say, still watching the birds circling, “has been the first time I’ve had chance to consider what’s happened. Everything. Miss Ives, my father, Thomas, Sembene. One moment I feel settled, as if a shard of light has crept through the darkness and then I remember what might be to come.”

She’s looking at me now. “What will be to come.”

“I can’t undo what’s done.”

“You can’t ignore that part of you, Ba’cho.”

“Even though it makes me into something I don’t want to be?” A leaf drops to the ground, catching the slight muttering of a breeze on the way down.

“I do not understand why you are still ashamed. All of us have done things we regret. It is this regret that stops us from becoming evil. None of us are truly pure, not even the most reclusive of monks or pious of priests. Anyone who claims not to have this darkness is likely concealing it in my experience,” Ela said. She stands up and taps me with the stick. “Come. You will eat with me tonight and we shall discuss things further.”

I stand and follow her through the trees to what should have been a reservation, but in my absence my father had relaxed the restrictions and had lived with the Indians peacefully. We pass the marker of my brother’s grave, where bare earth once was there is now grass, more than three years’ growth.

“Ba’cho! Ba’cho!” I hear before I am bowled at by two of the boys, Ela’s great grandsons. “We have new bows,” one of them tells me.

“Afterwards,” Ela says. “First you must help cook supper.”

 

It is dusk by the time we have eaten and I have aimed at tree targets with the boys. The late summer sun has left the evening warm, but the wind from the moors still whispers. I have rolled a cigarette, a habit of Vanessa’s I have chosen not to give up and watch the trees dance. Around me are the wooden houses of the tribe. The remains of fire’s flicker and the air is scented with food. The darkening sky is tempered with deep oranges and reds; a painting for a rich man’s sitting room.

“We leave at sunrise,” Ela’s grandson says. My childhood friend and the enemy of my father. Tak. He will ride with me to the port and we will bid farewell, just as we did three years before. “And next time you return don’t bring the inspector.”

He and Rusk did not like each other. There had been an element of distrust that had bordered on being humorous to all apart from the men concerned.

“He will bring a wife next time,” Ela says from inside the home. “Maybe a child.”

This makes me laugh. “I don’t think that’s what’s in the cards,” I say.

“You don’t read them.”

“Neither do you.”

Ela appears, hands on hips and I remember my boyhood, being chased after stealing food from her, running through the forest barefoot and hearing only our laughter and her empty threats. I had grown up here, away from my father’s discipline and my brother’s golden halo. It was here I had learned of ways and customs other than my Catholic church and here that I saw different horizons to what my father had planned for me. “There are other ways to see someone’s future, Mr Chandler,” she says, coming outside and sitting down. “Before I take to my sleep let me give you some more advice.”

“I’ll add it to the volumes.”

She tuts at me and Tak smiles. His wife is beside him now, his boys in bed. Nascha, he reminds me often, is alive because of me. I did what he couldn’t; I saved his wife. He saw mine die. “There are people who see through the veil between worlds much more clearly than the rest of the world. You and I both know there is a thin divide.”

I remember chanting, voices, hallucinations and speech coming from things that should never have spoken. I remember arrows flying across a full moon and a uniform that I had been forced into. I looked at Tak and saw his grandmother’s power flicker quietly in his eyes. “Always.”

“Beware the dead, Ethan. Beware those who should be in the ground.”


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

My ass is still sore from the ride across half the states to the port and my ribs ache from both a brawl in a bar and laughter, of which there was much. The full moon has passed so the other passengers on the boat have no reason to fear me and I have the luxury of a few days with only those that take the half life to look out for, and thankfully they are far and few between. 

The crossing will be around a week if the weather is good to us. I feel worry starting to rise about how I will be received back in London, by more than just Miss Ives. Her appearances in my dreams have increased since leaving my childhood home; now it seems that she is in every one in many guises, and I wake frequently imagining that she is next to me or nearby, in danger or in anger and sometimes in love. Tak woke me one night during the journey to the port, trying to stop me from shouting her name, but he would not tell me what else I said. The expression on his face suggested it would only cause me pain to know.

I can see the ocean all around us, as if we are sailing through a sapphire. This passage is already much more pleasant than the journey with Rusk, the lack of a cage and chains an immediate improvement. Ela was correct in her words, some atonement is already done so the lightness can be viewed without fear.

Rusk is already back in London, probably content with himself and satisfied now he had seen at first hand the demon he had been seeking. He handed me over to my father at the port, not expecting the brush off he was given, not expecting a man like my father. I don’t recall much else; my thoughts had turned inwards, filled only with Sembene’s blood and thoughts of Vanessa without me. At what I had become and the terror that I was lost to it, without even death to look forward to. I recalled in a moment of clarity Vanessa begging me to take her life, to give her that release and my refusal. She called me cruel at one point and that first night travelling across the states to New Mexico I understood why.

We returned to the house where I was brought up after my mother died and I was left alone in a secured room. I didn’t care. Whichever fucking god was on duty had abandoned me and I had no reason to keep hold of my sanity. There was a freedom in giving in to the madness, of letting myself sink underneath that wilder ocean than the one I sail across now.

And then the full moon arrived in its timely manner and I changed. Locks on doors were not strong enough to keep me prisoner and I broke free, watched by my father and his man, Rusk in attendance and I fled to my brother’s grave, which was where Ela found me the following morning, as if she knew I’d be there. There was no hunger to sate or words to say. Not at that point. She read the hatred for myself in my eyes and never tried to persuade me from it.

According to the captain, the ship is making good time and our journey should take us no more than eight days in total. We’ve been at sea for one already so there’s just a week until I’m on English soil. The captain’s pleased as his wife has just had a little girl and he’s anxious to be home to see how she’s grown. I smile, say something appropriate and he invites me to eat with him this evening. I thank him, all the time looking behind his shoulder to check that there is no curly haired woman standing there, just one of the demons I’m unable to run from.

My father had me extradited, not needing the controversy that either my hanging or imprisonment would cause. He had become a political man; in the time since I’d seen him had developed his contacts in Washington and although didn’t wish to become president, he had a desire to gain more power that way, now he had no sons left. I’d never been what he wished; I was the opposite of Thomas, my brother. I learned easily, quickly but would rather be out shooting or riding. Thomas lingered over his lessons and would try to engage father in intellectual conversations, failing miserably but increasing my father’s power over us both. I ran wild, wanting to impress him in my own way and it was then I found the reservation and Tak.

I still remember that almost carefree part of my childhood. Running barefoot across the fields, climbing trees and fashioning our own bows and arrows. And then there was the magic; the superstition and rituals that dominated Tak’s tribe. Not everyone was good. Not everyone tried to be good.

At first, father ignored our friendship, but when I became vocal about the treatment the Indians were receiving he stopped me from walking through the woods, or going anywhere and I was sent away to school. I didn’t last there. It was too easy to escape so time and time again I was picked up by father’s men and taken back to school or to home, to face the wrath of daddy who had been burying himself in whisky and whores.

I was beaten to within an inch of my life and saw the sadism in every nightmare since. Giving in to what he required was the only option and I learned to keep my mouth shut when he was around, say my prayers and do as I was asked. I married his business partner’s daughter when I was eighteen, a sweet girl called Laura, who I wasn’t in love with, but it meant I no longer lived under the same roof as my devil of a father. Laura was older than me and had a simplicity younger than her years. She was beautiful in a way that men noticed, a beauty made all the more when she failed to pick up on their flirtations and comments. In a bar one evening I heard the local white men discussing her, what they would do to her or let their sons do, how they would teach her. I felt the rage burn deep within my belly and a fire thunder through me. I ended up in a police cell that night, my brother dragging me home the following morning, chiding me in a way worse than my father.

“You were upset by what they were saying about her?” my father said. “Upset?” he spat the words.

“And you aren’t? The daughter of your friend to be spoken about in such a way?” It once would’ve pained me to speak back, but by this time I was braver, more stupid maybe.

“She’s just a quim without a thought in her head. She’ll be good for two things…”

He didn’t continue, just shuffled papers and looked at me in a way that suggested I was good for nothing.

“She’s going to get hurt.”

“You’re not some white knight, Ethan. Unless you want her for a wife I suggest you learn that not everyone can be protected.”

“Fine. I’ll marry her.” The words were out before I had thought about them. I was eighteen. I’d had girls before, discretely away from my father’s ears and eyes, and I’d found I enjoyed their company. But there had been nobody serious, an older girl maybe, Charlotte or Lottie as she was known. But I was merely her plaything for a few months before she left me with an almost broken heart.

My father looked up and pushed his papers to one side. “That could suit us both. If she’ll take you I’ll have it arranged.”

That night as I walked back from stabling the horses a group of men set upon me, leaving me for the night bloodied and bruised in the bushes. I had known who they were: my father’s men. I was too tall and too broad for him to take his fists to himself, but he could live vicariously through men from the shadows.

I didn’t go home until the bruises had cleared, instead making my way to the reservation and Ela’s healing tinctures. By the time I returned my wedding was planned. Laura had always liked me and for her a wedding was the chance to dress up and look pretty, which she did. My father took great pleasure in arranging the wedding night, understanding full well that I would never force Laura to do something she couldn’t understand.

Rusk never saw that side to the old man he met. The three years had not been kind. There was a weakness down his left side and his voice was sometimes slurred, no longer by alcohol. The house had been emptied of ornaments, as if someone had taken away the woman’s touch and I wondered if my father had given up fucking his regular prostitutes. I didn’t ask. Even when I returned after the full moon, after I had spent three weeks in Ela’s house, lying by a constant fire, listening to her chants and incantations while Tak watched with his cat-like stare.

“Your father loves you,” Ela said, when I was cognizant enough to understand.

“No,” I replied. “He loved the idea of me. Not who I was, who I am now. And especially not after I killed Thomas.” I was sitting up by this point, sipping at a potion Tak had made that tasted of bitter wood with added honey.

“He knows that you saved us,” Ela said, an old book in front of her, written in a language I couldn’t understand. 

I looked away. She knew of the atrocities I’d committed.

After I married Laura I joined the army, my last attempt at freedom away from my father. He wasn’t pleased, but Thomas was demanding more of his time as he struggled with father’s business deals and his own vices, namely younger girls who weren’t that interested. And Laura, his brother’s wife.

I killed my first man on Thomas’ birthday in a massacre of a tribe of Apaches. It wasn’t an Apache, but an American by the name of Tobias Youngman. I found him about to rape one of their women so shot him in the head and told the woman to run. Lying had always come easy so I confessed to missing a shot, then killed an Apache outright to prove my loyalty.

The third kill I don’t remember. They all blur into one eventually.

 

Around my neck I wear two tokens on a chain. One is of St Jude, patron saint of lost causes, given to me by Brona. The other is a piece of silver with an etching on, made by Ela and Tak, with a symbol I don’t understand. I touch them frequently, reminding myself that I have survived extradition and my father, the only thing that has damaged my soul is myself.

Ela talked to me about walking the line between light and dark and how easy it is to step into the shadows but to keep sight of the light, even if it’s in the distance. Even before I became what I am, I walked in those shadows and was proud of it even. Now am I no longer proud for I have nothing left to prove.

On the journey from England I would’ve gladly cast myself into the ocean, the rope having been denied me, but Rusk’s cage prevented such a final act. Now the waves that surround the ship no longer call; instead I urge them to draw me closer to England so that I can use this lingering darkness to cushion anothers’.


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter 3

Lyle woke abruptly and immediately sat up, his heart pounding as if he’d been doing something strenuous. There was clearly no immediate danger. No one lay next to him, for his wife had her own boudoir in her own quarters; the window was closed; the door bolted and there was no thing entering or leaving the room through a wall.

He lay back down, now wide-awake and as perturbed as he was on a daily basis when his mind cast itself a half year or so back to the events at Madame Poole’s and shuddered. He thought of it regularly, more than he wanted to. 

There had been nothing of any significance until a fortnight ago when an odd dream had woken him. He’d heard Hecate’s voice in the background, saying something he couldn’t quite understand, maybe because it was in a different language. Even when his eyes were open he’d still heard the words, but had put it down to too much gin the night before. Then he’d had the dream again, even when he had gone to bed sober.

Lyle sat up again, pulling on his robe and making a decision to perform his morning ablutions and take a carriage over to Sir Malcolm’s to see if anyone had yet returned. This would be the tenth day he had carried out such a mission, the tenth day of fretting over things that were probably a result of a party he had been to where absinthe was served a little too liberally.

But that didn’t tally with Miss Ives and the charming Mr Chandler and the things that had gone which he could explain but left him trembling, and not with excitement, which was rather unfortunate. He had always thought that Mr Chandler and excitement should’ve gone hand in hand.

It was just after four when he left, an ungodly hour but he wasn’t sure in for which god that would be true. There were already people up and around, or maybe those who hadn’t gone to bed at all from the night before. He remembered those days with affection and sometimes embarrassment, depending on which part was being recalled. 

A knockerupper rapped on the windows of the mill workers; a woman cussed from her open casement and a bowl of something was tipped from another. Lyle kept his chin up and walked on. There was little he hadn’t seen, or so he thought, given the decadent life he’d had, with a wife whose own proclivities had lain elsewhere, he’d been able to explore more of the tribe into which he’d be born and the darker side of humanity to which the door had been opened.

Sir Malcolm’s house was as Lyle had seen it two days ago. Dark. Lyle felt his shoulders sag and his chin drop, eyes to the cobbles. He had wondered whether it was the company he missed, the being useful within a field he’d enjoyed. Now he was a curator again, with a wife and a society that was gloriously showable but nowhere near as exciting as some of it had been. Sir Malcolm was still in Africa, it seemed, in Senegal maybe, where Sembene had come from. Miss Ives had left shortly after and he’d assumed the American had gone with her.

That left the doctor, whose rationality would be a good thing. Maybe something could be prescribed so he could relax a little more, realise that the evil that had plagued them had now gone.

But even he knew that wasn’t true.

Lyle stopped a carriage and gave directions to the tenement block where he knew the doctor to live. It wasn’t the sort of area he was too keen on, but he tried not to judge as he paid the driver and stared at the building. A short woman, rather fat, passed by.  
“You lost, sir?” she said, stopping.

Lyle appraised her, looking for any resemblance of Hecate Poole. “Looking for a friend.”

“He live round here, does he?”

“Yes. Doctor Frankenstein. You might know of him…” he was about to describe him when the woman cut him short.

“Strange bloke, red eyed most of the time. Had a woman staying with him for a bit but not seem either of ‘em for weeks but then he always did keep strange hours. He’s third one across in the bottom one,” she had already started to walk away as she said the final word.

The door to Frankenstein’s home wasn’t locked, which was both bad and good. There was a chance he might be in, or something else might be there instead, which was worrying. “Victor?” Lyle called. “Doctor Frankenstein?”

He realised he’d been holding his breath due to the smell. An odour of things rotting manifested itself through Lyle’s nasal cavities and he tried to breathe through his mouth as he wandered passed the tables and medical equipment he had no wish to be familiar with.

Victor Frankenstein lay on his side in a shirt that couldn’t be given to a tramp and a pair of trousers that would never be worn again. Lyle knelt down next to him and checked for a pulse, preferably one that did not have vomit nearby. Lyle had known many people who used morphine regularly. He had been around them, known some users intimately and made no judgement. His particular poison was gin, amongst other things.

“Doctor,” he said, gently shaking the man’s shoulder. “Victor. It’s Ferdinand. Ferdinand Lyle.” The man was alive but nowhere near conscious. Lyle sighed and stepped back, viewing his surroundings. In Frankenstein’s position he’d take on more morphine too if he woke up to this mess. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and decided to make himself useful. At least he could do this.

By the time Victor had opened his eyes the room was sanitised and the smell of stale vomit had diminished. Lyle was sitting on a chair, perusing a Penny Dreadful that he assumed had belonged to Frankenstein's companion. He had already read the paper from three weeks ago and had nipped out to buy today’s early news from a small boy who looked as if he hadn’t had a meal in weeks. 

There was a groan before the eyes closed again and Lyle debated the water treatment but decided the smell of eggs and bacon being cooked would be preferable.

As the bacon sizzled he heard Frankenstein move, groan and speak. “Lily?”

“It’s Lyle.”

Frankenstein sat up, eyes red, face thin. “You’re not Lily?” Pause. “You’re Lyle. What the fuck are you doing in my house?”

“Checking you’re not dead. Bringing you back to life. You choose.” He wasn’t offended. He’d heard worse from people who had just woken up.

“You should let me die.”

Lyle sat down, watching Frankenstein writhe on the floor. The after affects of morphine were not the most pleasant. They made the night after a gin party seem positively paradise. 

“Then there would have been no point in cleaning your abode.”

Frankenstein looked about the rooms. “Lily wasn’t here?”

“No. It seemed that no one apart from yourself had been here for a few weeks. You should eat. I’ve seen more meat on a rabid dog. Then wash and I’ll incinerate your clothes.”

“Why are you here?”

Lyle passed a plate of food over. He had no doubt that it would be vomited up but one could hope. “I appear to be suffering from the side effects of our adventures earlier in the year.”

“Which are what?”

“Dreams. I keep having dreams. Specifically about Hecate Poole who I sadly don’t think died in the fire.”

“Dreams.” Frankenstein played with his food. “I’m not the sort of doctor you want for that.”

“It’s not necessarily a doctor I want, my dear. More someone whom I can speak to about it without being sent to an asylum. And maybe prescribe a little something that will stop me from waking up in a cold sweat every night.”

“Is Sir Malcolm back?”

“I fear not.”

“Miss Ives?”

“Neither she nor Mr Chandler can be found.” Lyle tapped his foot impatiently.

Frankenstein finished the food, saying nothing more. He managed to stand then staggered off. Lyle heard the sound of water, cursing and then retching. He grimaced and tried to read the paper, his attention draw to a short article on the sixth page. Two men had been murdered after leaving a gentlemen’s club in the early hours of the morning, both were gentry, sons of members of parliament and otherwise immune to the law. 

“Right, Professor Lyle. I think for my own sanity we should leave this place as I could do with some fresh air.” Lyle turned around to where Frankenstein stood, his appearance still sick looking but his attire much cleaner.

“If you don’t mind me saying, my dear, I think you should refrain from indulging in the opiates for a time. Maybe try gin instead.” Lyle stood, leaving the paper to the floor. “Do you need to take anything with you?” 

There was a shake of the head. “No. I think it best I leave my needles here. You have a point. I rather wish they didn’t. Where do you think we should best go?”

Lyle had considered this. His own house was big enough to let Victor live there without ever seeing him, but that posed its own implications. There was one place where seemed the most logical. “Sir Malcolm’s. If we can get in.”


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

As virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go, whilst some of their sad friends do say, the breath goes now, and some say no.  
\- John Donne

It is during a storm that he sees her; chained to a metal post. There is no one around for the storm is brutal, like the country has been so far.

She is scarred. White gashes interfere with the blackness of her skin and her hair has been shorn recently and without care. She is crying, tears mingle with the sharp shards of rain and although he is being battered with the same force he stops to look at her, to stare.

Her eyes are on him. He can see large brown pools watching him as he is standing there, wondering why the hell he is outside on a night like this but it is not her wonderment that is voice.

“Si vous voyez mon maître, le tuer.”

Her voice is brittle. There is something dead in. “I don’t know who your master is. So if I see him, I can’t kill him.” Malcolm isn’t sure about slavery any more. He isn’t sure about a lot of things since.

She understands English, turning her head to one side as he approaches, curious. A slave master would only leave one of his outside in weather like this if he wanted rid.

“Sembene.” She tries to stand up but the chains restrict her. “You knew Sembene.”

Now he recognises her. With hair and without the marks she was from Tuli, Sembene’s village. “Yes,” he says. “So did you.”

“Then, if you see my master kill him. For me. For Sembene.”

Malcolm shouts for the rain has become harder. “Where is he?”

“There.” She nods across the water to an inn, not one Malcolm wishes to custom as it is known for trouble.

“I won’t kill him,” he says. “But I will pay him.”

Malcolm returns an hour later, a little poorer but bearing keys. The rain is ceasing for it is all cried out and he finds his new acquisition with her head against the post, eyes closed, asleep. He unlocks the chains, waking her and she stumbles upwards, leaning onto his arms.

“What is your name?”

“Ebele,” she says. “It means kindness.”

He half carries her to the place he is staying. The storm has ceased and tomorrow he will need to move on, if he can. He hasn’t planned for an extra passenger. No one looks as he walks through the lounge half carrying Ebele or asks him any questions as he takes her upstairs to his room. He has paid them enough to ask no questions.

As soon as he places her on the bed she is asleep, still soaking from the rain. Kindness rather than voyeurism motivates him to strip the cloth she is wearing and he covers her with a blanket, throwing the clothes away. They are sodden and filthy. She smells raw, or blood and of muck and her body is branded, beaten. He lies on the sofa and closes his eyes, listening to the breath of another as if it is a lullaby.

In the morning she is awake before him, a sheet wrapped around her. He sees her dark eyes as he wakes, hears her silence. ‘Good morning,” he says.

Ebele nods. “It is morning. I don’t know yet if it is good.”

Malcolm sits up. “You are free to go. I can take you to a place that is safer for you, where you won’t be captured.”

“Take me to England,” she says. “I will work for you until I have repaid you what you have spent to free me.”

Malcolm is surprised. He thought she would ask him to take her to her village, or a halfway point so she could get there somehow. He isn’t sure how he feels. He came to Africa to bury Sembene, not to find his replacement. “I don’t know. I don’t need workers at present.”

She stands, eyes ablaze. “Sembene sold me years ago and I returned. I was in the village when he saved you. Senegal is a small country and my people are a small group, Malcolm Murray. You may not need a worker but you will need my skills.”

Malcolm is afraid. Since being in Africa, even with all of its tribalism and rituals, he has felt safe returning Sembene’s body to the place where he was born, sleeping under the stars with the animals around. But now his head is back in London, the fear reminiscent of that which he felt in Evelyn Poole’s home. “How do you know this?”

“There is a market near the inn from where you met the slave master. I like the colour orange best; I find its resemblance to the sun a comfort. I don’t know everything, Malcolm, only some, only that I can help.”

He leaves everything with her except his money and goes to the market, returning with clothes and half expecting her to be gone. But she isn’t. She is washed, clean, swaddled in a sheet. She smiles at what he has brought and disappears to change, saying nothing.

Outside the area bustles. Traders are stomping their ground, selling other men and women. There is an atmosphere of violence and unrest and Malcolm wants to leave. There is a ship that afternoon, sailing to Liverpool. It is a goods vessel and the crossing will likely be rough. 

“You chose well.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you. Ebele.”

“That is just a name.”

Her eyes dance and then he sees her arms, the dark insides etched with markings, symbols. Juju’s. He has seen them before, usually amulets worn to protect but as a slave jewellery was forbidden.

“How old are you?”

“Ageless.” She is smiling. He is becoming cross.

“How old?”

“I think I was born forty years ago. I have no children. I have not been married. The rest of my tribe are dead or gone. I have the ways of my people and my own soul.”

He paces to the door, unsure if she still owns that soul or if it has been exchanged. He can take no risks. “I travel back to England today. I cannot take you back.”

“You don’t trust me?”

He looks at her, sadness brimming in his eyes. “I don’t know who to trust?”

“Then let me return with you and show you.”


End file.
